To the government, Kevin Mitnick was "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." To the data-shuffling dimwits at AT&T, he's just a confused and annoying customer, who is totally making things up about his phone being hacked.

• Tech reporter John C. Dvorak says hacker Kevin Mitnick should become chairman of Hewlett-Packard. Har har. That's the tech equivalent of "Christopher Walken for President." [Dvorak Uncensored]

Liberal bias aside, journalists hate telling a one-sided story, so the Red Herring needed a source sympathetic to Hewlett-Packard's phone-record-snooping chairwoman, Patricia Dunn. Someone who's done their own social engineering. Someone hardcore. And writer Brian Caulfield found one: Kevin Mitnick.

Q. What's the difference between HP Chairwoman Patricia Dunn and once-jailed hacker Kevin Mitnick?
A. One's a pretexter, the other's a convicted pretexter!

Hoo boy, how large is the crowd that'll feel smug today at the news that hacker Kevin Mitnick got hacked this weekend? Hackers from Pakistan left "a vulgar message" on the front pages of Kevin's personal site says CNET. The result (captured by alt-news site Zone-h) is rather fetching, especially the illustration shown here.

Superstar hacker Kevin Mitnick is out of a Bogota hospital after getting floored by the flu, according to an AP report (which hasn't been publically reprinted yet).